I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

Why stop at Hillary? I'm sure they'll get somebody even worse in 2020/24 (Cory Booker?) and you can use the same SCOTUS figleaf unto infinity.

xxxp

The billionaire also issued his most damning indictment of the current campaigns to date. "I find the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters," Bloomberg told the Financial Times, adding that the public deserved "a lot better."

Yeah, I look at this wonderful, wacky vigorous campaign and I think, "Yeah, what this needs is the electrifying presence of Mike Freaking Bloomberg." And I am sure that the energized Democratic base is looking forward to hearing from the plutocratic king of stop and search, and I am equally sure that the energized Republican base is looking forward to hearing from a gun-grabbing Mayor of New York. Unless somebody figures out a way to clone Evan Bayh into infinity, this is a mere vanity exercise with potentially awful consequences. Go count your money, Sparky.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a41967/jeb-bush-campaign-finance-reform/

I would honestly love to hear a lucid ('lucid') right-wing explanation of how exactly the country is currently worse than it was when Obama initially took office.

man alive I'm making fun of Rubio not you (speaking for myself)

Sorry, I went too subtle.

Yeah that was hyperbolic of me. Supreme Court makeup definitely a reason to vote Dem.

I just imagine Bernie, even if he is unable to get anything done as president, inspiring more left-leaning people across the country to get into local politics and stuff, unafraid of being called a socialist, willing to throw his support behind the issues that come up. It seems like social change really starts at the local level and it is clear that Bernie inspires people on that level. I could see Bernie actually bringing these up and discussing them, whereas I HAVE SEEN Hillary avoiding issues entirely in favor of whatever non-committal politeness gets her a vote.

wait, did obama destroy the country? i thought alan greenspan destroyed the country and then obama kinda helped make things temporarily not as destroyed. i haven't really been following the country that much lately.

xposts

a vote for HRC is not the same as a vote for a republican.

it's somewhat personal for me because if a republican takes office my work will see massive budget cuts and the president will try to implement recommendations that come straight from ALEC. that's just one of many differences. yes, HRC and a republican will both likely expand the use of drones and strenghthen the surveillance state, and they'll both go easy on wall street. but man it takes some serious tunnel vision to believe that there's really no difference. obamacare, as flawed as it is, never would have passed unless the democrats controlled the senate/house/presidency. what do you think will be the conservative equivalent if they gained complete control of the executive and legislative branches?

(republicans keep saying he destroyed the country...)

They already have complete control. They have been shutting the gov't down in protest yearly.

man alive I'm making fun of Rubio not you (speaking for myself)

― Evan, Tuesday, February 9, 2016 12:37 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry, I went too subtle.

― Evan, Tuesday, February 9, 2016 12:39 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh lol sorry, I think I didn't read your post carefully.

"what do you think will be the conservative equivalent if they gained complete control of the executive and legislative branches?"

oh man the world is their dirty oyster. there is no end to the hijinx they could get up to.

sort of goes without saying, i would think, that bloomberg would be vastly preferable to any of the current crop of GOP candidates

the Republicans need Evan Bayh

bloomberg no-labels rich centrist types will always wildly overinflate their political pull and will never be convinced otherwise. that we're seeing two of its opposing political types -- anticorporate leftism and anti-immigrant nationalism -- in very strong position in both parties is a signal that just never registers. rich people are blind and stupid.

They already have complete control. They have been shutting the gov't down in protest yearly.

i'm not sure you (and many others) realize how much worse it could get than that

I was playing a character working out the logic in Rubios twisted logic while emphasizing the twisting.

i know morbs hates it every time we say so but the supreme court is a perfectly good -- i mean, completely sufficient -- reason to get out and vote for shitty democrats every four years. sorry doctor it's true!

i agree that it's not *the same*, and that there isn't *no difference*. The amount of difference will not save us. xxxxxxxxxxp

Bloomberg is virtually identical to Clinton politically. Maybe worse on racist policing, maybe better on guns.

bloomberg would never fucking win

Morbs, you ready to watch the Miguel Estrada confirmation heroes?

They already have complete control. They have been shutting the gov't down in protest yearly.

The federal government has been shut down once since 1995:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#List_of_U.S._government_funding_gaps

standard nyer provincialism thinking bloomberg is this goddamn miracle candidate

ie if Sanders by some miracle were nominated, Bloomfuck wd essentially be continuing a Clinton campaign by proxy. I believe Ed Scumbag Rendell already said he'd endorse him under those circumstances, and there'd be plenty more Dem defections where that came from.

the SC argument is good but it's just the tip of the iceberg. absurd amounts of time and effort are spent by democrat administrations in fighting lawsuits from industry and conservative groups trying to undermine regulations. it's incredibly boring stuff but a generic Democrat will at least make an effort to not lose ground. a republican president would just hire a bunch of ALEC dudes as agency consultants and proceed with the dismantling of regulations

hillary and sanders will have roughly the same pool of people to draw from in selecting federal department heads and that's a wildly different group of people than even a Kasich (the friendly and non-idiot Walker) would be picking

I kind of want to see Bloomberg jump in just to see him get the Brady-at-Superbowl-50 treatment

but no, that Bloomfuck whine would not travel well.

Miguel Estrada... reserve infielder for the Marlins?

Also, as we have seen the last two years, there's much a president can do w/exec orders.

does anyone have the ZIPS projections for these candidates

i only barely know who michael bloomberg is tbh

are you very confident about what kind of exec orders Prez Clinton II will issue? i think some of them might suck.

crut, come to NYC sometime, we can TP his mansion.

thank god for david brooks. SOMEONE has to defend obama.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/opinion/i-miss-barack-obama.html?_r=0

"Imagine if Barack and Michelle Obama joined the board of a charity you’re involved in. You’d be happy to have such people in your community. Could you say that comfortably about Ted Cruz?"

sanders + cruz + bloomie and trump as independents. chaos!

anyone with a billion or two (or some $27 donations from normal ppl) can play

"Miss Barack Obama"

bloomberg-as-miracle-candidate is more a fantasy of the sad center-right coalition of technocracy fetishists, urban real-estate developers, libertarians, 'theater liberals' and the business-minded generally... which probably does overlap a lot with NYC, but i feel the nation's gay-tolerant Babbitts are legitimately lacking a great 'business' candidate... the problem is just that outside of new york they don't really have winning numbers, while a good portion of that coalition are perfectly content to vote for center-right democrats.

if he'd entered the republican race at the start, he would have gotten creamed like giuliani, and be competing today for jeb bush's dwindling voters. in the democratic race he offers very little that clinton doesn't offer, except minus the foreign policy baggage but plus the policing and inequality baggage. in an actual three-party race he could potentially serve as spoiler (at nader levels, not perot ones) if clinton were not the nominee. in the overwhelmingly likely scenario that clinton is the nominee, he offers basically nothing and nobody would vote for him. he has to realize that, so the only reason for him to make all these rumblings is to try and scare people away from voting for sanders in the primaries.

the alarming thing though is the increasing trend towards this trope of "independent billionaire strongman can solve the problems because he's not beholden to the other set of billionaires paying for his campaign." granted, it just further lays bare tendencies that have long been in play, but it doesn't bode well imho.

Sanderscare

ok lol

it's our version of the Benign Dictator fantasy xp

Sotosyn, i just looked up Miguel Estrada and have zero memory of that 'controversy'. what do you take me for, i don't remember this shit at the level of baseball or Iranian cinema.

should be Berniecare obv

there is no way it would be called anything but "Berniecare," let's get real. it just sounds so friendly. like even if he weren't named bernie, it's what the focus groups and the Innocent Smoothies image advisers would have come up with.

the alarming thing though is the increasing trend towards this trope of "independent billionaire strongman can solve the problems because he's not beholden to the other set of billionaires paying for his campaign." granted, it just further lays bare tendencies that have long been in play, but it doesn't bode well imho.

It works for Trump too. Just as long as we pretend money is not something these billionaires are beholden to, this train can continue to roll.

Innocent Smoothies image advisers

great phrases that make 0 sense outside of ilx

that's part of the allure of ILX

even as your personal life, career, and relationships go down the tubes, you can still come here and understand the Innocent Smoothies references

https://youtu.be/UHcD5-TGHvY

Innocent Smoothies is all I have left

thinking specifically of Oscar-brand health insurance and its unpleasant NYC subway ads:

http://content.mothernewyork.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Oscar_Pants_Final2-01.png

i wish i were an oscar meyer wiener...